Prompt: ((If you doin' prompts... how about a AU where Augustine just happened to survive the weapon))
for conflagratingeidolon
(Pokémon Y alternate ending)
The world is burning.
Everywhere he looks, flames. Destruction. Death. The horrific blooming of an insane plan, the flowering of the ambitions of one deranged man.
And that deranged man is his friend.
No. Was his friend. He can't let sentiment get in his way, now.
"Lysandre!" he cries out, choking a bit on the thick, dark smoke curling in the air around them. "How could you do this? I thought you wanted to make the world a better place!"
"And I have, haven't I?" the man—because that person is not Lysandre, it can't be, Lysandre would never do something like this, it can't be it can't be it can't—
"This is your idea of a beautiful world?!" he somehow manages to choke out despite the smoke invading his lungs and the desperate, drowning feeling in his heart.
"Indeed," the man replies. "Now, there will be enough resources to go around. No one will have to fight for such things any more. No wars will be fought ever again, and no more people or Pokémon will be forced to suffer through such atrocities."
"Because you killed them!" he screeches, jabbing a finger at the man accusingly. "That was your brilliant solution? Do you know how many innocent lives were lost?"
The man sighs heavily. "I would not have done such a thing if there was another way, believe me. I did what I had to do."
"Like hell you did! What happened to wanting to help people? You killed them all before they had a chance to change!"
"Oh Augustine, Augustine, Augustine," the man says, shaking his head with a laugh that sends chills down Augustine's spine. "How dreadfully naïve of you. If it were that simple, our troubles would have ended long ago. But that was far from the case, don't you see? It was all for the best, in the end…"
Augustine feels sick to his stomach, eyes stinging (from the smoke, he tells himself) as he looks up into the cold blue eyes of the stranger standing before him. Run, and never look back, he tells himself, but his legs seem to be made of lead. His heart is throbbing relentlessly, and his tongue tastes like ashes in his mouth. Leave him. Leave, and never look back. Lys—the man starts walking closer, and Augustine can only stare in wide-eyed panic, trembling where he stands. Run. Hide. Get away from him, get away, stay away stay away don't come any closer please please no stop come back to me, LYSANDRE, PLEASE—
"There, there, Augustine," the man with his best friend's face says, embracing him and rubbing soothing circles into his back, holding Augustine as his body is wracked with tremors and tears begin to flow uncontrollably down his ash-stained cheeks. "You're part of a new world now. A perfect, beautiful world. Isn't it wonderful?"
Augustine says nothing, clutching desperately at the fabric of the man's jacket as he buries his face in the man's shoulder to muffle his sobs. He returns the embrace, standing amidst the fire and death and destruction, clinging to this man like he is an anchor and Augustine is a tiny rowboat lost in a roaring, turbulent sea.
Because he is weak, in the end, and this stranger with Lysandre's face is better than having no Lysandre at all.